Valentine's Duel: As Told By Nozomi Tojo
by Escape Trampoline
Summary: The day before Valentine's, Umi and Nico find themselves rivals for Maki's affections, and decide to settle their differences with a physical fight. It's a deadly decision, and the responsibility falls on Eli and Nozomi to stop the fight and save them from each other.


**i just wanted to write something silly and pretend i am nozomi even if i'd never be able to reach that level of spiritual divinity**

 **edit: I forgot to mention, due to the nature of this fic, reader discretion is advised. If you're extremely sensitive about your ships, this fic might not be for you. Particularly anyone who hardcore ships a Maki ship.**

* * *

Chocolates, greeting cards, flowers, red as far as the eye can see. Meaningful for anyone who's felt the skipping of a lovestruck heart. Held yearly for the celebration of romances around world, chivalric or unconventional as they may be.

I'm talking about Valentine's Day.

Originating from Europe, spread by centuries of colonization and transformed by the dynamic nature of mankind and their cultures, the practice of giving gifts to loved ones on Valentine's day is one of many that were born of human passion. With or without the serendipity that makes life rich, It's undoubtedly helped many a relationship along, just as its namesake had long ago, not that I'm anything close to a history buff.

It approaches yet again this year.

Ever since she discovered that chocolate was her favorite food in the world, Elicchi, romantic as she is, has seen Valentine's Day as 'Free Chocolate Day', and her fondness for it has only grown since coming to the girls-exclusive Otonokizaka, where the only difference between Valentine's Day and White Day is that one is much easier to say than the other. In her eyes, that's two Free Chocolate Days every year. Seeing as this is Ayase Eli, who is responsible for half of the lesbian population of this school-the other half being Umi's responsibility-that's more chocolate than Willy Wonka would know what to do with. To the point, Eli likes Valentine's Day.

Has her excitement for it rubbed off on me? Perhaps a little, but this year, it's severely dampened by a chronological-superstitious hurdle.

This year, Valentine's Day, February 14th, falls under a Saturday.

So, today, Friday, would be the 13th.

Before I'm accused of being a victim of silly superstition, maybe citing my Tarot as a cause, I need to remind everyone that I have a natural defense against the dangers of broken mirrors, black cats and umbrellas opened indoors. Friday the 13th by itself isn't a threat to me.

What _is_ a threat is the osmosis of misfortune between me and the people I know.

And among μ's, I know two people for whom Lady Luck has never smiled.

The day itself was tame, really. Elicchi and I met no difficulties out of the ordinary aside from the usual excitement that comes with holidays. As usual, we went to the student council room at the end of ours classes. Elicchi got started on her leftover paperwork while I did some preliminary card reading, and the disaster begun when Rin burst inside.

"Eli-chan! Nozomi-chan! You have to come to the roof right now!"

The Tower card sat in my hand as she spoke. Dread pooled in my stomach.

"What's wrong?" Elicchi asked.

"Nyah, it's Nico-chan and Umi-chan!" Rin said. "Just hurry!" And she was off again before either of us could say another word.

After a trade of troubled nods, we hurried to the roof as Rin told us.

As we climbed up the stairs, the air seemed charged with tension, and my intuition told me that it wasn't a good sign. We opened the door to the roof.

Nicocchi and Umi stood across each other, glaring icy daggers into each other's skulls. The air around them was warped as a testament to their intensity, which might've been normal had we not been half a year away from summer. I wanted to approach, but some otherworldly force that didn't bend to my will like they usually did had fixed my feet to the ground, barely any distance past the door.

"When and where do we square off, Sonoda?" Nicocchi said.

"In the Sonoda dojo, at the crack of dawn tomorrow," Umi said, "and if you don't arrive by the twelfth strike of the shishi-odoshi, you can consider this battle lost."

Nicocchi scoffed. "I would never lose Maki-chan to someone as weak-willed as you!"

"This isn't a battle of will, Nico," Umi said. "This will be a battle of the heart. Tomorrow, we will see who between us truly deserves Nishikino Maki's hand."

"I look forward to it."

Another moment of glaring, and then they both turned around in unison, releasing the rest of the world from their spell. While Umi stared into the distance, Nicocchi decided to leave the area, walking past me and Elicchi and shutting the door behind her with a decisive slam.

Once it shut, Umi's hands flew to her quickly-reddening face. "I can't believe I said that!" she squeaked, sinking to her knees. "That was so embarrassing!"

Kotori walked up to Umi and rubbed soothing circles on her back. "It's okay, Umi-chan!" she said. "It was actually kind of cool!"

"But so embarrassing!"

While Kotori continued coaxing Umi out of her ball of shame, Elicchi and I questioned the rest of the members on the roof, which consisted of Honoka and Hanayo.

"What happened here?" Elicchi asked.

"It was amazing!" Honoka said. "And pretty scary, too, but also amazing!"

"What was?" I said.

Honoka catapulted into an explanation. "So we all have practice on the roof all the time, right? Well, usually on Fridays like this we start without you two since you have end-of-the-week student council work, but we also started without Maki today because she had to go get something in her classroom. Anyway, we were doing our partner stretches, me with Kotori-chan, Rin-chan with Hanayo-chan, and Umi-chan with Nico-chan, and then we started talking about Valentine's Day tomorrow! Kayo-chan said she was pretty excited about it first, and then Kotori started talking about our Mogyutto Love costumes from-"

Elicchi held her hand out. "To the point, please."

"Oh, sorry. Anyway, Valentine's, right? And then Nico started being a tease and she asked Umi if she had anyone in mind for this year. And you know what Umi said?" Honoka paused for effect. "She said yes! Umi-chan had a valentine! Umi-chan! And she said it was Maki-chan!"

"We _did_ hear them say something about that," I said. "I'm guessing Nicocchi had similar ideas, putting her at odds with Umi-chan and resulting in that whole exchange earlier."

Hanayo nodded thrice and quickly. "It was actually really scary!" she said with a trembling voice. Was she tearing up? "The air got all wavy and I think their eyes were lighting up and none of us could move! The only one who could was Rin, so we sent her to get you two as soon as possible, but..."

Elicchi looked down gravely. "We couldn't stop them, either."

Then a frustrated scream cut through the air. When we looked, Umi was missing from Kotori's side and the door just clicked shut.

"U-uh, Umi-chan needed to run her problems off," Kotori said, "but Eli-chan, Nozomi-chan, you have to stop them from fighting."

"I know," Eli said.

"No no no, Kotori-chan means you _really_ need to stop them," Honoka said, stepping in front of Eli. "Umi-chan is really strong and gets really serious about things like this. Even when she's not serious, she can knock me out with a chop behind my neck."

Hanayo joined her. "And Nico-chan can get really brutal when she thinks it's called for," she said. "She's already pretty intense on a regular basis, but I'm afraid of what might happen if she pours all that energy into a fight."

Kotori stood up. "There might be blood."

I caught a bead of sweat slide down Elicchi's temple. The situation did seem worse than originally thought, and for the weight of the situation, the burden of Umi-chan and Nicocchi's lives to be thrust upon her shoulders so suddenly, she needed help.

So of course, I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. "We can still convince them to leave it," I told her. "There's still time."

The door to the roof burst open again, and Rin dashed through it, pulling a visibly-bewildered Maki by her wrist.

"See, Maki-chan, they're-Eh?" Rin looked around. "They're gone?"

Maki pulled her hand out of Rin's grip. "Rin, for the last time, _what's going on?"_

"Maki-chan," Kotori said. "Nico-chan and Umi-chan are going to fight to the death over you tomorrow."

"What?" Maki took Rin by the shoulders and begun shaking her back and forth. "Rin! Why didn't you say anything?"

Rin's eyes were shut in fear. "I-I didn't know what was happening!" she said. "We were just doing our stretches and then Nico-chan and Umi-chan started to glare at each other and no one else could move, so-"

Maki let out a breath. "Okay, geez, it's all right." Crossing her arms, she gave Elicchi a glance. "I take it you're already trying to work out a solution?"

A smirk, though shaky, alighted on Elicchi's face. "It's not much of one, but it's the best we can do in such short notice. Rin," she snapped her fingers, "round 'em up."

Rin nearly fell to the ground.

* * *

It took a good twenty minutes for us to find Umi and Nicocchi around campus, and after a bit of a struggle, we managed to haul them into the club room and tie them to chairs across each other by the table. While it was just me, Elicchi and those two in the room, the other five members were standing by just outside the door in case anything went wrong, unbeknownst to our targets of dissuasion.

Once she secured the last few knots for Nico's ankle binds, Elicchi strode to the front of the room and placed her hands on the table. "Umi, Nico," she said, voice low and nodding at them in turn, "we need to talk."

"Our bout will continue tomorrow, Eli," Umi said. "We will not be swayed."

Nico nodded. "So quit wasting your time and untie us already."

Elicchi shook her head. "I can't do that. As student council president, it's my duty to prevent harm caused between fellow students, but more importantly..." She softened her voice. "...as your friend, I don't want to see you two fighting, physically hurting each other over something that can be resolved peacefully. I've done sub-unit work with the both of you, and I know you're both capable of working this out in a better, more civilized way."

"Whoa, whoa, hold on," Nico said. "Since when were you ever in a unit with Umi?"

"Do you remember Soldier Game?"

 _"That?"_ Nico scoffed. "You can hardly call Solder Game a sub-unit. I mean, you guys did a grand total of one song together before you split up, even if it _was_ a hit with the fans and a pretty big influence to our current image considering. I can admit the song has its presence, but to face the facts, Soldier Game is just the hot, unforgettable one-night stand to BiBi's long, committed relationship."

"Nico, please," Elicchi cut in, "this is hardly relevant to my point."

"It's _very_ relevant," Nico said, nose in the air. "Consider, first: aside from you, Eli, who in the composition of Soldier Game and BiBi can serve as a point of commonality?" She paused to look Umi in the eye. "That's right, it's Maki-chan. Umi, the only difference between Soldier Game and BiBi is you and me."

Umi's eyes narrowed with frightening subtlety. "What exactly are you insinuating?"

"There's no insinuating here, Sonoda," Nico spat. (At this point, Elicchi appeared to have realized that she dug her own grave and looked to me for help, but I was at a loss just as she was, so instead I pretended that Nico was actually making a captivating speech.) "It's a prediction on each of our respective relationships with Maki-chan. They'll work out just the way our sub-units did. On the off chance that you and Maki-chan actually get together, at most it'll last a week or two before you split up, with fresh wounds in the heart and thoughts along the lines of 'What could we have been?' for maybe a month until you eventually get over each other. On the other hand, if Maki-chan gets with me, I can say with confidence that we'll go as far as marriage and kids, in the end becoming better people despite or thanks to our differences, and with a little luck, we'll be a real historical power couple rivaling the fame of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony. You two will _be_ history, while we will be making history."

On the outside, Umi seemed to be completely indifferent to Nicocchi's monologue of ambition, but I could hear the ropes creak around her wrists. I didn't want to learn if she could snap them-actually, I kinda did, but not with Nicocchi's life on the line-so I placed a hand on her shoulder and tried to speak for her. "Nicocchi, let's not do things like this."

Her face twisted the way it does after an insult to her posing. "Are you siding with her, Nozomi?"

"She's not siding with anyone," Elicchi said. "You're only fueling the fire, Nico."

"Duh," Nicocchi said. "This is a fight. Now come on, Sonoda, don't you have something to fight back with, or am I just too right?"

Rather like Umi's patience, the ropes snapped.

I held my hand out to grab at the collar of her blazer in case she jumped at Nico from across the table, but instead she just stood up, back straight, shoulders squared, jaw tight and fists clenched. " _Enough_ , Nico," she said, voice low and rumbling like an approaching storm. "I understand that we're enemies, but what you're doing right now is deplorable."

"Ugh, look at this princess." Nico slung her head back, vaguely tilted in Eli's direction. "Can't take even a little competitive trash-talking, so she's hiding behind some funny honor mumbo jumbo to make it seem like I'm the wimp here."

Umi's frown deepened. "If you go any farther, Nico, I can't guarantee that you won't have made an enemy of my entire family."

"If they're anything like you, I don't think I'll have much to worry about."

Oh boy. The air was doing that wavy thing again. I could feel my limbs freezing up.

While I still could, I looked at Elicchi, gesturing with my head at the door and hoping she could still reach it, but the spell had locked itself around her too securely and she could only look at me, eyes wide in fear.

Then the door burst open. Rin had never looked more angelic as she picked Nico's chair up along with its occupant and ran out with it.

With her enemy out of the premises, Umi seemed to calm down, and the freedom returned to me and Elicchi's bodies. But with that freedom came a foreboding realization.

Tomorrow's dawn was something to dread.

* * *

 **so are you team nico or team umi**


End file.
